


all's well in heartbreak and hell

by Mestia



Series: Bookstore AU [1]
Category: MapleStory
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, POV Second Person, PhanAria and PhanLumi are both minor relationships, Pining, and actually are onesided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 16:34:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19360651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mestia/pseuds/Mestia
Summary: You were sure you were going to hell. (Phantom/Alpha)





	all's well in heartbreak and hell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [satsuha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/satsuha/gifts).



> 2ND PERSON POV
> 
> Read yourself as PHANTOM. 
> 
> \- this is a very detailed au, i covered some of the characters backstories in this to give you a better look LOL  
> \- Alpha is 20, Phantom is 27.

You were sure you were going to hell.

A small background of crime never did anyone - other than the victims, maybe - a little harm, you used to think, when you took pickpocketing for a profession. It wasn’t like you needed the stolen goods, no, you had plenty of money yourself from your inheritance from your late father. He was proud, even. He would say, “ _as long as you lived in the thrill of life_ ” with his raspy voice and muffled coughs. 

When Raven left you when you were a kid, you _felt like_  you had nothing, so you thought to yourself: I’ll steal. 

You were young, arrogant; _naive_. You used to think there was nothing in the world that was out of your reach.

Until you met her.

She was absolutely gorgeous, with pale skin and blonde locks that adorned her face. Her eyes were blue like the vast sky, and her smile was graceful with glossed pink lips. She called herself “Aria” and she was your teacher in Junior High. 

She caught you once, stealing from a young man. She told you off; her gorgeous features scrunched up in a deep frown, brows furrowed together. You didn’t pay attention to anything she said, focused only on the shape of her lips and the angelic sound of her voice.

You thought that was the first time you had fallen in love. 

You did everything to get her attention; you expanded your horizons, used your impeccable memory and mixed it with a bit of genius intellect. You made the world focus on _you_ , with hopes she would be part of the crowd. You left behind that grey stained past and made everything colourful, all in theatrics, just so Aria could _look at you_.

And that attention? You got it, yes, you did. You could tell your efforts bore fruit because she _did_ look at you - with her lips in a smile, soft and warm. She always smiled the same every time, responded with praises when due, supported you in any way she could and was always, _always_ there for you. 

Until she wasn’t.

You weren’t _stupid_. You knew she didn’t _actually_ **_look_ ** at you. She didn’t see you in the same longing, desperate gaze you looked at her. Her baby blues never gave way to any sort of desperation, hunger, _desire_ when your irises did. 

You always saw, the way her eyes were just a little bit sad. You always knew that _she_ knew what kind of feelings you had, and _you_ knew that she could never return it. 

You think it must be God’s punishment for your petty crimes as a _naive_ boy. Because you stole, God stole back. 

One day, she falls into an accident. Shattered parts of her body like glass, but she lives. You think that her survival was God’s way of saying thank you, as shitty as it was, for you giving up your old profession. 

Except, her accident was too horrific, and off she went, transported to another country for treatment. You don’t see her again.

 

* * *

 

You thought to yourself, this is the last time you were falling in love, for the price of romance was nothing worth the crushing heartbreak.

But you were a fucking _idiot_. 

Because the next time you looked at someone like they were the starchild, you didn’t see it coming. 

He was a boy with silver locks and another set of blues. His skin was ivory, his lips were a pale pink and his eyebrows were thick and always furrowed when he looked at you. His name was Luminous, and you couldn’t help but think it fitted him all too well. 

The joke was, he was always technically at your side. The romantic side of you wanted to believe it was fate; the way you two always ended up in the same school, same class throughout the years. Even the same college - in the end, you pursued education, because even if Aria left against her will, you wanted to honour her memory. 

He was always there. 

Luminous was your opposite. Where you were the jester, he was the knight. Where you were an open book, he was a rock with little emotions. He was all work and no play, and you were play and no work. 

Be it Newton’s Laws of Attraction or whatever, but it was because opposites attract. At least that might’ve been your reasoning, not your ridiculously love-deprived self talking.

You were more forward this time. You did your best; over the years of various short-lived conquests you had picked up a few tricks here and there, and used all of them for him. You, like with Aria, did everything you could - from theatrics to innuendos and even some direct confessions when you were at your most desperate. 

Even when you caught the way he looked at the music teacher from the school you both worked in, you never gave up. Even when you were vividly aware you were fighting a losing battle, you never gave up. 

Then they tied the knot. 

You gave up after that.

 

* * *

 

Maybe it’s the lust. Maybe it’s the loneliness at the root of your heart. Maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that. 

But at some point, something inside of you snapped. Maybe it was the remainder of your heart, did you have any left? You didn’t know that anymore. You didn’t think you know _anything_ anymore. 

Until you caught the sight of ruby. 

You thought it was routine, at this point, with how you abused self-proclaimed privileges and stopped by this creepy looking bookshop at the corner of an old shopping district. You thought it was muscle memory when your feet carried you up the steps, the way your hand pushed the handle, and the way your mouth forced an optimistic greeting out of you throat. 

You were greeted with irritated red eyes hidden beneath a boxed frame and a chastising reply to your entrance. A part of his fringe is tied back by a small wing-shaped hairclip, and his hair is in its usual neat-messy bed hair arrangement. A strand of his hair is hidden behind a pierced ear, and for a moment, your breath had hitched.

Was he always this pretty?

He, Alpha,  was the kid who was - _somehow_ \- weirdly always there - too. Something inside of you clicked together when you looked at him. 

The boy who was the focus of his internal crisis was one of your former students. He was the cousin of your previous love, and you met when you stole his skateboard one day trying to chase after your old beloved. He chased after you with a golf club, and somehow, you two ended up friends. And then, after graduating with your teaching diploma, you chose to teach and as fate persisted; he became part of your first class. It made him an old alumni from his first teaching career, and you always deemed him as your favourite student. 

That was all it had ever been. Maybe some older brother figure feelings here and there from your part.

Then you realized that - from him, no. It wasn’t the same. 

When you weren’t looking, he held that gaze that you once wore towards Aria; hungry, longing, _desperate_.

He was just  _like_ you. 

 _To_ you.

But there was a difference. The difference between you two was that he never made it known. 

(Because he knew all too well that the way he looked at you was disgustingly like a mirror to how you looked at his cousin. 

He knew that, for all his boldness in front of a fight, all of it escapes him in the face of romance. Even with all the encouragement from his best friends and his own sister, he couldn’t do _shit_ .  He knew that no matter what he could try, for as long as you looked the other way, nothing could make you _look_ at him.

So he had no choice but to accept it.)

Even on his day of graduation he held his tongue and swallowed his confession in, because he knew you looked at someone else. You had thought the deep sorrow he held in his eyes was because of the bitterness of graduation, and you continued on in blissful ignorance of his heartbreak. 

The crushing realization overwhelms you with too many feelings, you hadn’t even realized you were staring at him until he walked up to you himself.

“Are you okay?” he looked mildly concerned now, staring at you with careful eyes. “I know the wedding was last week, and that it’s still winter break now for kids but uh - God, I can’t believe I’m asking this - how are you holding up?”

For a moment, you felt hysterical. Because you sincerely didn’t know - amidst all the drinking and wallowing in self pity and broken ego, you didn’t know. You hung out with some other old college friends, made a few minor bad decisions, and still, you don’t know. 

Maybe it’s because you didn’t know that you found yourself here, in this oddly warm store. 

“Peachy,” you finally said after a few moments. “Peachy, and still single. Now I have no goals now, though. Mid-life crisis.”

For the briefest moment you thought you saw hurt in his eyes and something inside of you twitched with the urge to hold him. But then he looked away as fast as it came, with his eyes obscured by his gold frames with a snort from his lips, and then the moment is gone. 

“Well, since you probably don’t intend on leaving me to the comforts of this solitude,” Alpha’s voice was dry, but wasn’t biting, “Start your usual routine of making me unwillingly listen to your overdramatic woes. Although...this time I might actually not mind.”

He took a step back and you took one step away from him, watched him turn the sign on the store door go from ‘open’ to ‘closed’. He pulled down the shutters, tidied up around him, then gestured over to the door leading to his own personal apartment. You raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t waste my generosity,” he shrugged, then stared at the floor for a few seconds, “Despite our ridiculous dynamic, we _are_ friends.”

There’s something in that statement that hurt you a bit - maybe it’s the way his voice slightly cracked, maybe it’s the way he won’t meet your eyes. Then again, you weren’t doing him any favours while being here anyway, so the least you could do was accept his terms. 

“Alright,” you returned him a shrug of your own, the corner of your lips crooked upwards a tad. “Lead the way.”

 

* * *

 

His apartment wasn’t too small, and it was cozy. It held a warmth that you thought could probably only belong to him, and despite there being minimal decorations, it felt full. 

While you took a seat by the couch and he made some tea - “I would bring alcohol, honestly, since I probably wouldn’t want to be sober for this, but I literally ran out yesterday,” Alpha said from the kitchen, the sound of glasses clinking and cupboards opening following after him - you had some time to think about this.

Because for starters, you weren’t sure, at the end of the day, of anything.

Oh yes, Luminous is out of the picture, he is out and married and is ready to become a family man. Despite years and years of pining, you never got anywhere, and despite your belief that the world is your oyster, you never got what you wanted. So where did that leave you now?

Here, thinking you can use your former pupil’s feelings for you as some kind of rebound?

It was disgusting how your mind thought of him as little as that. You knew you didn’t deserve him, with how selfish you were. You didn’t deserve the way he always, always listened to you quip and complain about his cousin, you didn’t deserve the patience he kept just for you, you didn’t deserve the way he tolerated every single _fucking_ time you broke his heart. 

You know you have absolutely no right to use him in such a way, not when all he’s given you was support in his own way.  

It’s not fair to him. No. None of this was fair, especially when you only decided to look at him like he had a chance literally ten minutes ago when he had been pining for you for over a decade -

Your felt your chest tighten. He was in love with you for a _decade_ , and you were too blind and smitten to think about him because you were so fucking selfish. 

Before you could continue weighing your options, you found a small teacup in front of you. The scent of Jasmine filled your nostrils and sense of calm washed over you.

“Fancy tea because I know you like fancy crap,” Alpha said when settling himself down on the armchair next to your seat on the sofa. You sip it down and felt the heat burn your throat, felt the tension begin to settle in the air. “Heartbreak, huh? How’s that experience.”

“Oh, it’s great, actually. Sure feel like a teenager in a romantic chick flick from the ‘90s,” you quipped, a chuckle forced out of your lips. You rarely found it difficult to talk in all sorts of situations, but for some reason, the words escaped you now. You swallowed some tea thickly and found yourself asking, “Have you got any experience with this?”

The air is heavy. Silence filled the room, but it was deafening to your ears. You felt his gaze on you, but you didn’t dare to look at him, playing a dumb charade, because you were a jester. 

“Yeah.”

His voice was deep and coarse - you thought it was the tea. You also thought it’s something else. 

“I did, yeah. I’m over them now.”

You didn’t know why your mouth moved faster than your brain today. You thought about all the _maybes_ but in the end you couldn’t help the curiosity that overtakes them all. So you ended up asking, “Oh? Who was the champ?”

Alpha was silent for a while. In that meantime, the _maybe_ s and  _what if_ s came in. 

Maybe the question was too intruding, but you had always been a nosy person. If this were a normal day, maybe he might have whacked him with his broom in the shop, telling him off for prodding. If this were a normal day, the two of you would not be feeling this suffocating tension in the air. If this were a normal day, you wouldn’t be feeling so fucking guilty, and if this were a normal day, you wouldn’t be plagued with the view of what he looks like, if seen _like that_.

An eternity seemed to pass when he finally answered. You had steeled yourself to face a deflection, but what came out was the honest truth. 

“It was you.”

You felt like you got punched in the throat. You finally turned to look at him, but what you see felts like another punch - he was _smiling_. This time, he focused his gaze onto the cup holder on the coffee table, a small smile on his face. He put his own cup down, and closed his distant eyes.

Even though his mouth held a smile, he looked so painfully sad. 

“Oh,” is all that slipped out of you. A part of you felt embarrassed at the pathetic noise, but the majority of you was numb from the admission. You didn’t think that sight would hurt you _so much_ , but it did, and you didn’t know what to say.

“It’s fine, though,” he continued his train of thought, long and hard pauses between every addition. “I’m over you now. I am, really.”

(He convinced himself he was, after all.)

In all your life, twenty-seven years of it, you had known heartbreak to be because you found yourself unable to get what you want. When Aria went away and never came back, when Luminous slipped from your fingers and got married - both times, you felt the world shattered in front of you, and you were familiar with the pain of the aftermath. 

But you right now you thought that none of that seemed comparable to what you saw before your eyes. Especially knowing that _you did that to him_.

 _You_ broke his heart like this.

“Anyway,” Alpha forced his eyes open, and he had a weak grin on his mouth. “We’re going to be talking about your heartbreak, not mine. So quit prying.”

You couldn’t find it in you to keep the charade on, because somehow, desperation (for _what_ , you didn’t even _know_ ) took over you. The biggest kicker of all of this is that you wish you hadn’t figured it out - even if it was just a few minutes ago, you wish you had never known. Maybe - _fuck_ maybe - it would’ve been for the best if you hadn’t known at all because, looking at  _this_ made you might've cried, somehow. 

“Alpha,” your voice was shaking when you spoke. He seemed to catch on, because then his eyes widened in confusion. “Do you _love_ me?” 

There was a sound of cracking glass, or at least, that’s what you think you heard. When you whipped your head around, it was just your imagination, but it felt so real because when you looked back at him, you saw everything at once. 

All of the hurt, all of the pain and beneath it all, the answer.

(He does.)

“I don’t want to answer that,” his voice was scathing when you both came back to your senses, “Why are we talking about me? We were meant to be talking about you. If not that, then get out of my house.” 

“We _are_ talking about me!” you couldn’t help but raise your voice. “We are talking about you _and_ me!”

“What the _fuck_ does that mean?” Alpha glowered at you, but his voice became quieter, “What the fuck does that mean, Phantom?” 

You didn’t know what you were doing anymore. You didn’t know what you felt anymore. But for one, you did know, is that you want _the pain to stop_. 

“I mean that _maybe_ ,” you clicked your teeth and averted your eyes away, “I _see_ you now.”

This time, there really was a glass breaking on the floor as Alpha dropped his cup, the tea spreading everywhere and the pieces scattered all over the tiles. For a moment, when you looked at him, you saw complete confusion in his eyes, watching the gears in his head turn. For a moment, you thought you saw hope flash in those scarlets, but then anger clouded over them before you could catch it.

“What? Like a rebound?” he said through gritted teeth and looked at you with such rage it felt almost intimidating. “Is that all I actually am to you? You want to _fuck_ me?”

“Alpha-”

“No! You _shut up_ . I don’t want to be your _rebound_ ,” he spat, looking at you glassy eyes full of hurt. “I _wanted_ you to _look_ at me like you actually - like you actually fucking _wanted_ me. But you _never did_ , so I gave up. ”

“And you come here and tell me,” he pointed to himself, voice breaking as he paused to swallow down a strangled sob, “That you - you want to do that - that you _see_ me right when I finally think I’m _over_ you?”

You know you’re a bastard. You knew you’re going to hell. 

Because, you knew, see. You knew this exactly what it would sound like. Your argument from before? It’s here, right here, in your face right now. Whatever you were trying to do to fix whatever _shit_ you started here, you were just making it worse. You deserve the thousand blades of pain you feel in your heart right now. You deserve all of it, because in the end, what _are_ you doing, Phantom?

(“I shouldn’t have told you,” he whispered under his breath.)

“You’re right,” you finally confessed with a sigh, your head in your hands,  “I’m an asshole. I don’t - I get it. I get what it sounds like.”

“I didn’t say you were, but I’m glad you got the sentiment. I don't want to be some sort of friend with benefits.” 

“Listen Alpha - I -” you bit your lip and tried to come up with the words, hoped that maybe voicing your thoughts will get them to clear it up, “And, if it’s any consolation, I’m not expecting anything. I was just -”

 _Just what_?

“Just-just trying to tell you that--”

“Just _what_ ,” Alpha said. 

“-That you’re pretty. Like, actually ridiculously pretty.”

There was an abrupt shift in the air, and even despite your embarrassing words - a part of your mind laughed at how despite your charm and extravagance, this was the best you can come up with? - you found yourself finally able to breathe. You ran a hand through your own dirty blonde locks, rubbing down your face. It also seemed to shut Alpha up, because when you glanced over, he was stunned into his place in the chair, the rim of his eyes slightly red. 

“For what it’s worth,” you laughed humorlessly, “I _really_ wish I noticed that sooner.”

“I can’t - I really, really don’t know what I’m doing. I walked here, not knowing what I was doing, wishing that maybe, I would have some sort of answer after I left here. But I didn’t even know what sort of answer that would be.”

Alpha’s breath hitched for a moment, and you took it as a cue to keep going. “I _know_ I’ve...I haven’t been fair. God, I _know_ , because I was on that receiving end too - even if, if that person was someone else. I wish, if I had to realize maybe I want to try something else it’d - it would’ve come at a better time than right now, but you know I’m spontaneous.”

You turned to him and faced the scarlets who looked at you with such a calculating gaze, but in them you thought you saw that maybe there was hope too. Because for one thing, you both knew, that the lies he’s told himself were still lies.

“A rebound relationship isn’t what I’m going to want with you,” you sighed, “A fulfilling one is. Uh, more than sex, I mean. But with these remaining feelings built from heartbreak remaining, it wouldn’t be - it wouldn’t be right now. So, can you - can you let me fall in love with you? Fuck, no, I’ve already started that-” 

“-just, let me. Please, Alpha. I...I _want_ to.”

By the time you finished, your voice shook so hard you felt a tear slip down your cheek which you hastily wiped, but saw a constant river flowing down his. Without thinking, you moved over, reached your hand out to touch him. Alpha flinched when your fingers brushed his cheek, but it was only a second before he relaxed onto your touch and let you brush away the tears that continued to fall.

“If I let myself hope,” he croaked, eyes shut, “I’ll just get hurt _again_.”

“But you still do it anyway, don’t you,” you said quietly, and took in the defeated sniffle he makes while he took off his glasses and wiped his face. “I won’t let it just end in hopes and dreams, not this time. Being your dream boy and all.”

His mouth quirked at that, and he shook his head slightly. “My dream boy was Blake, the KPOP idol. You are nowhere near close.”   

“Ouch.”

Alpha was silent again, for another while, but you felt relief this time because the pain in his eyes, all of the hurt you had seen - they were slowly replaced with something else.

“I didn’t want to be the person you would just go to and be conveniently there because you were too much of a pussy to confess to him before he was taken. But you know what? I just sat there and accepted it all, because I thought I would never have a chance,” he took back your hand, holding it with both of his and with feather-like touches, and you took one to wrap your fingers around his palm, “But if you say the truth then...I’ll consider it.”

When he looks at you, he smiled again, but this time, you felt your heart mend itself instead of break. This time, his smile filled you with such warmth in your heart, one that you didn’t think you’ve ever felt before amid all the pain from crushed hearts and angst. This time, his smile filled you with love and you found yourself smiling back, hand tight in your hold, never wanting to let go.

You were sure you were going to hell.

 

But even then, maybe heaven will wait for you too.


End file.
